It’s hard for me to know how to pray some days. It’s not that I don’t have anything or anyone to pray for. Lord knows, the list is long.
It’s just that I have a desire to really feel God, to be in His presence. Sometimes the feeling is there. Sometimes it’s not.
I sit down in my special chair each morning with my tea and my notebook and my bible. And I wait.
Unfortunately, I’m not a very patient person. I like to be doing something, which means I give God about 35 seconds to begin this little morning board meeting.
Okay God. I’m here. Start downloading all the information you need me to know today. Who will need my help? What did I do wrong yesterday that I need to work on today? Oh and thanks for this, that and the other thing.
If I don’t “hear” or “feel” anything, I move on and open my bible, sometimes to a random passage and sometimes to a subject I’m studying.
When we try to rush God, our prayer time can start to feel a little pathetic.
Based on the suggestion of a friend, I’ve been trying something new. Instead of just reading the bible, she suggested I pick out one verse, write it down and then dissect it.
The last time I dissected something was in a high school science class. This new way of meeting with God has been absolutely fascinating.
I’m going to use this week’s memory verse as an example.
“Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.” Psalm 62:5 (NLT)
First of all, the hysterical thing about using this verse is that it’s all about waiting on God. Quietly. Patiently. God gave me this verse to teach me how to sit quietly in His presence. God has quite the sense of humor.
Okay, so I write down that verse and then I begin to pick out the words that stand out to me and I write other words next to them.
Let ALL (everything, every bit, my soul, my entirety) that I am WAIT (cease, rest, pause, sit, stay) QUIETLY (calmly, peacefully, submissively — be astonished!) before God, for my HOPE (my future, peace, solution, answer, expectation, outcome, the thing that I long for) is IN (from) him.
The good news is there is no right or wrong answer. You just allow your brain to start replacing words with other, similar words, that really speak to you.
You know what I got out of that exercise with this particular verse? Two words.
BE ASTONISHED.
That is what I feel like God is telling me in this verse. When I sit before him quietly each morning, instead of waiting for him to download a set of instructions for the day, or instead of giving him my laundry list of needs, he is asking me to just sit and ponder His greatness.
Be astonished, Nicole. Look around you. Listen to the silence. And know that I AM God. Everything else will work itself out through my grace. You only need to be astonished.
Before I leave my cozy chair in the morning, I do one more thing. I use that verse that I’ve just dissected to write a prayer.
Yours will look different than mine. That’s the beauty. Again, there’s no wrong or right. You simply pour a little of your heart out to God and trust him to handle it gently.
God, please help me. Help everything that I am, my whole being, my entirety, quietly submit and BE ASTONISHED by you. I know that my hope, my future, my peace, my joy, my solutions, my expectations and the things that I long for are in and from only you. Forgive me when I forget that. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
